Devin Balkind began his career as a consultant and entrepreneur who created a crowdfunding platform for nonprofits. When he realized that a lack of collaboration and coordination between nonprofits was limiting civil society's effectiveness more than its lack of funding, he abandoned his for-profit venture to investigate where authentic social innovation was taking place. He soon discovered the free/libre/open-source software movement and has been determined to apply its processes and principles to civil society ever since. Through his nonprofit Sarapis, Devin has worked with a wide range of groups including community organizations, farms, social movements, disaster relief providers and software projects. His boldest collaborations have been with the Occupy movement, where he's worked diverse and dynamic teams to set up a myriad of technical solutions. Beyond giving him the opportunity to test out a lot of tools and techniques, Occupy strengthened his ability to bring users and technologists together to tackle real world challenges. vitamindwb.com
Doug Carmichael moved from (or through) physics, psychology, psychoanalysis to strategic consulting in a wide range of corporate, non profit and governments. Co-created the Stanford Strategy Studio (now on hold) to explore how adults can have more intelligent conversations, started a high level no agenda allowed discussion group in Palo Alto, worked with Don Kennedy and Paul Ehrlich on environmental issues, convincing me environmentalists were too naive about economics, so he became a consultant on strategy and the humanities to the Institute for New Economic Thinking (what is it? could we recognize it?) Cal tech, Berkeley, Harvard, professor at Santa Cruz (long ago), studied with Erich Fromm, influenced by Feynman, Feyerabned, Jerry Lettivin (MIT), Piaget and Eric Voegelin. Ran consulting projects using The Source and Mosaic from the late seventies. He drafted a book, GardenWorld Politics and blogs at www.dougcarmichael.com . He says “An organization is a page of data and a novel full of relationships.”
Jerri Chou is the Co-Founder of The Feast Social Innovation Conference, which brings together the world’s radical creatives, entrepreneurs, thinkers, doers, and innovators from across all disciplines to drive new ways of making the world work better. She is a master at communicating big ideas and inspiring action, and accomplished in producing large scale events that combine many platforms. Named one of FastCompany's Most Creative People in Business, she is also the head strategist at Lovely Day, the agency for "human brands," and works to make innovative social solutions the new standard for "business as usual." She lives in New York City.
Marcia Conner advises corporate execs and entrepreneurs to radically improve organization systems so people flourish and business thrives. Described by one client as "making work not suck," she's often brought in as a culture “fixer,” radically accelerating how people engage and innovate. Fellow of the Darden School of Business, on Telefónica’s Disruptive Council and longtime contributor for Fast Company, she has appeared on ABC, BBC, and in the Wall Street Journal. Clients span industries including telecom, financial services, healthcare, food and beverage. She was VP/Information Futurist at PeopleSoft, Worldwide Manager at Microsoft and Partner at Altimeter. She has lead several global programs on distributed organizational models, uniting modern network technologies and the insights of complex adaptive systems. Her last book was The New Social Learning: A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media. Her next book focuses on the untapped power of human ingenuity. She is based in Staunton Virginia. marciaconner.com
Joe Edelman’s main professional interest is rebuilding empires of consumption as empires of fulfillment. A key area of study is the difference between consumer choice and meaningful choice. Here are three things he'd like to build this year: (a) a mobile OS based on giving people meaningful choices; (b) a "time well spent" metadata standard that can help people chose the right things to engage with in tech; (c) a "happiness HMO" (really a fulfillment HMO) that takes a monthly fee and guarantees fulfillment. Joe has worked for The Gov’t of Tibet in Exile, Interval Research Corporation, the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, WGBH Television, Dartmouth College, a post-Katrina soup kitchen, an unschool called North Star, renesys.com, and others. nxhx.org
Curtis Faith is best known as a member of the elite Chicago trading group, the Turtles. The group started as a bet between its founders: Were traders born or raised? In his early 20s, Curtis earned more money than makes good sense as a Turtle and he wrote a bestselling book, Way of the Turtle, detailing these adventures. He retired from trading at 27. Curtis has been a successful and very unsuccessful tech entrepreneur. He founded several software and tech startups. Curtis sometimes serves as a part-time CTO and advisor to startups and has consulted to the marketing and development departments of many Silicon Valley startups. Curtis has spent the last five years in field research for a book on the economic underpinnings of poverty and other seemingly intractable social problems.
Mark Frazier is cofounder and president of Openworld, a nonprofit volunteer network specializing in innovative ways to remove barriers to entrepreneurship. He has worked in 50+ countries over the past three decades on policy reforms and free economic zones. Mark’s current focus is on strategies for self-help groups to become financially sustainable through land grants, and on virtual games to help awaken dormant property values. In Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, he is active in nonprofit groups working to improve the local business climate and expand access to skills via micro-scholarships. Earlier in his career, he was publisher and managing editor of Reason magazine, and cofounder of the Local Government Center, the springboard for Reason Foundation’s privatization practice. Mark Frazier is a graduate of Harvard University and former Visiting Fellow of the Lehrman Institute. http://openworld.com
Flemming Funch made a living as a freelance programmer for many years. He also had a career as a counselor and trained in various alternative therapies. He wrote a couple of books about his techniques for a somewhat specialized audience. In the mid-1990s, he created an early social network for visionaries, called the New Civilization Network, both acting as facilitator and as sole programmer. He learned a lot about what worked and what didn't work for online communities. He has a passion for creating better tools for collaborative environments that actually serve the intended outcomes. Fleming is good at making complex principles and ideas simple to understand. He writes and speaks well - preferably about certain philosophical and/or future oriented themes. He would like to help find keys to collective intelligence and to grow a better global brain. He is currently passionate about his maker experience with the aquaponic greenhouse in his garden and about west coast swing dancing.
JoelGetzendanner spent the last 25 years working on the question of how to organize large scale, social and institutional change. About half of that time, he worked in philanthropy, managing a $20 million grant portfolio at the Joyce Foundation and $300 million endowment and social investment portfolio at the F.B. Heron Foundation. The balance of his time has involved working with social entrepreneurs -- as varied as the World Bank, a hydrogen car manufacturer, an international mother-to-mother support group, and a software start-up -- developing and implement new strategies and organizational concepts that take on a networked and distributed form, and embody a strong social purpose and set of principles. Joel was a frequent visitor to the Santa Fe Institute in the early 1990's, and was a founding board member of the Chaordic Alliance, the Identity Commons and the Fourth Sector Network. He's also a bit of a karaoke junkie… www.joelgetz.com
Eric Grab is a multi-talented technologist and adventurer. Starting in 1989 with background in computer science and software engineering, he worked on and evangelized state-of-the-art systems for Booz Allen and Hamilton, DivX, Massive Media Group, Rovi, San Diego State University, and Walt Disney Studios. Since 2000 he has worked with movie studios and consumer electronics companies to move forward the vision of easy and secure access to digital entertainment. Starting with no offshore boating experience, Eric trained, prepared, and outfitted a new state of the art boat for a two-year global adventure to visit over 30 countries from 2007 to 2009. Kosmos, one of the smallest power boats (43 feet) to ever circumnavigate around the world, was piloted by Eric and his wife. Eric is currently a VP of Technology for Rovi Corporation. http://kosmos.liveflux.net/blog.
Jordan Greenhall was a co-founder of DivX and served as the Company’s CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directions from 2000 until 2007. From January 1999 to June 1999, Mr. Greenhall was Vice President at MP3.com, a digital media company. From July 1999 to January 2000, Mr. Greenhall served as a Strategic Consultant with INTERVU, a premier streaming media services provider. Mr. Greenhall received a J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School and a B.A., summa cum laude, from Texas A&M University. From 2009 to 2012 he served on the Board of Trustees of the Santa Fe Institute. He is presently on the Board of Directors of One Health Solutions and Mogul and on the Board of Advisors of Takelessons.
Mark How is an entrepreneurial executive/operator with strengths in closing strategic deals, leading business development and sales. Passionate about teams, trust and building technology organizations with great people. Mark spent the last ~2 years at a Google Ventures, Intel & Bessemer funded start-up (SweetLabs), as a divisional GM and board representative for an ad network for apps(Opencandy). Prior to that Mark has run Sales and Business Development teams a a variety of successful start ups, having taken 3 companies to profitability, and 2 to IPO over the last 15 years. A husband of almost 20 years, and the father of 2 wonderful girls Mark loves to spend time with family and friends. At other times "life is" Mark being a zealously passionate foodie, oenophile, and coffee-holic. Mark was born in Canada but lives in San Diego now.
Yasuhiko Genku Kimura is a Zen Buddhist priest, philosopher, and cosmologist who teaches philosophy as a way of self-realization, uniquelyintegrating advanced Western scientific thought with the intuitive wisdom of Eastern spiritual traditions. Yasuhiko is a creator and leader of well over one hundred original philosophical self-developmental programs; consultant to leaders in business, science, and cultural organizations; translator of esoteric ancient Japanese and Chinese scriptures; and author of books and essays on the themes of integral philosophy, evolutionary ethics, authentic spirituality, evolution of consciousness, philosophy of science, and business leadership. He served as Executive Director of the Twilight Club, a venerable cultural-ethical movement founded by Herbert Spencer, Ralph Emerson, Andrew Carnegie, etc., and further developed by Walter Russell, Thomas Watson, Sr., Alexis Carrel, etc. In 2003 Yasuhiko established Vision-In-Action as the successor of the Twilight Club for the 21st century, envisioned as an omnicentric meta-movement for individual and world transformation. www.VIA-VisionInAction.org
Amy Kirschner is the Founder of the Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility (VBSR) Marketplace program, a peer-to-peer mutual credit system. She has degrees from Purdue University (B.S., Business) and the University of Vermont (M.S., Natural Resources). She received a 2010 Rising Star Award from Vermont Business Magazine, is a coordinator for the National Day of Civic Hacking (Burlington) and for the Women Business Owners Network (Stowe). Crowd-sourced Description: Social Enterprise, Future of Money, Rethinking Money, Alt.Currencies, Positive Futures, Commons, Mutual Aid, Sharing Economy, New Economy, Digital Finance, Creators, Social Change Innovator, Local First, Think Differently, Big Thinker, Emergence, Innovative Systems, Collaboration, Weaver, Resilience Technician, Gardening, Vermont.
Bruce Kunkelis co-founder and board member of Sonoma County GoLocal Coop. He recently retired as Principal of Bruce Kunkel – Integral Human Capital, a hi-tech executive search and consulting firm. Prior, Bruce founded and ran Dovetail, Inc., Silicon Valley executive search firm, enjoyed success as co-founder and recording artist with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and was founder and CEO of Zenbod Corporation, an early mass customization fashion company. As a hi-tech organizational consultant, Bruce has secured and counseled key talent for engineering, sales, marketing, operations, and finance sectors for pre-IPOs and startups, as well as public technology clients. Bruce is co-founder of the Santa Rosa Integral Salon and is active in economic localization and community building. http://sonomacounty.golocal.coop/
Lydia Laurenson received her B.A. from Bard College At Simon's Rock in 2004, when she was 19. She spent several years managing the oldest bookstore in Chicago and freelancing as a game designer, most prominently at the award-winning White Wolf Game Studio. She soon developed a deep interest in social justice and community-building, working extensively with cooperatives and artistic non-profits. She created a well-known four-year-long public program at the Hull-House, and was elected Chairman of the Board at a South Side housing cooperative. In her mid-twenties, Lydia served with the Peace Corps in Swaziland, Africa. Upon her return, she spent several years as a journalist, editor, and speaker. Lydia has worked with outlets ranging from The Guardian, to Time Out, to Gawker Media; she has spoken at universities across the U.S., and at South By Southwest Interactive. In 2012, she began consulting on social media strategy and other digital marketing questions.
Drew Little is a New Economist/Game Designer/Tech Social Entrepreneur on a mission to help humanity live creative, purpose-driven lives in a sustainable world. He is the creator of an evolutionary economic model called Producism, which aims to democratize money, social entrepreneurship, and education by fully utilizing the power of the web, in order to revitalize local economies and communities in a fun and easy way. He recently published a book about this model called "The Producism Manifesto: A New Game For A New Economy. He is the founder of the idea incubator cooperative, The Illuminated Ventures Project, and the new economy startup, Producia, which is a reality-based, virtual economy game for universities, MOOCs, and local communities. Drew is a member of The Young Entrepreneur Council, and a board member of The Lifeboat Foundation (New Money Systems, Human Trajectories, Finance, and Economics subcommittees). He is a contributor to Shareable Magazine, Social Earth, and The Daily Bitcoin. drewlittle.co
Mark McDonough currently manages software testing for VisionFoundry in Tyson’s corner, VA. He has done a little bit of everything in the web industry: QA, Tech Writing, Development, Database Administration, and UI design. He has been a computer keypunch operator, an FM DJ, a start-up entrepreneur, an architectural historian, and a reporter. He also has been the business manager for a museum and a high school history teacher specializing in instructing the great unwashed – the latter of which he says was probably his favorite job, and far and away the hardest. Mark received his Masters of Education from Harvard University and his BA from Brown. http://www.well.com/~mcdee/
Venessa Miemis - Venessa’s background in psychology, social theory, and media studies, combined with interests in futures studies, systems theory, and consciousness research create a unique perspective from which to think about massive change. Her inquiries cover broad territory, from big picture thinking about the evolution of human civilization, down to personal reflection on how to be a more empowered and happy person. http://emergentbydesign.com/
Thor Muller has been a San Francisco-based Internet entrepreneur since 1995, most recently founding a company called Get Satisfaction. He is also the co-founder and former Managing Director of Rubyred Labs, a web apps firm. Thor was a first generation Web entrepreneur, creating Web success stories for companies such as Yahoo, Dell, Bank of America, Intel, Virgin Records, Fujitsu, Discovery Channel, and Sony. In 1995, he started and ran an early Web development boutique, Prophet Communications, where he served as VP of Digital Media. He just co-authored a best-selling book called Get Lucky: How to Put Planned Serendipity to Work For You and Your Business. Over the last few years Thor has been collecting people who have an interest in systemic overhaul, and is interested in helping to build out this network towards a pragmatic end. http://thormuller.com
Mike Needham was a retired college textbook publisher and a fierce defender of IP rights when he arrived at Game~B. Now he is a recovering textbook publisher and a fierce defender of open-source alternatives. Mike's first job out of college was U.S. Treasury Agent, I.R.S. He soon moved on to college textbook sales for Wadsworth Publishing (a Thomson/Reuters sub.). After a few years at sales management he was promoted to Science Editor at Broke/Cole Publishing, a division of Wadsworth. Eventually Mike became President of Brooks/Cole. He has also been CEO of the college divisions of: South-Western Publishing (another Thomson company), McGraw-Hill Publishing and Worth Publishers. Mike returned to the Washington DC area and Thomson/Reuters to manage a financial newsletter and retired from T/R to start a publishing consulting shop. He has since served as a Board member and advisor to a number of successful start-ups including Websurveyor Corp. and Abacast, Inc. He is a graduate of the University of Maryland at College Park
Bill Nichols is currently doing information architecture for a government agency. He has twenty five plus years in technology and twenty plus years in financial services. Bill is an expert in software design, production and sales, corporate governance, and the plumbing of the financial system – especially securities markets and payments systems. Bill was the CEO of a startup sold to Thomson Financial in 1995 where he remained for more than seven years. Bill has a significant background in M&A and operations integration. He has consulted for a variety of companies, from NY’s most prestigious wine merchant to Nasdaq.
Sebastien Paquet likes to refer to himself using fancy terms like "culture hacker" and "social alchemist". He is an expert in knowledge sharing, collaboration technology and social software. He wants to help the unfolding of local resilience and a living economy by acting as an explainer, a connector and a catalyst. He wrote one of the first dissertations on social software (2003) and received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Université de Montréal. He has been involved in research (National Research Council of Canada) and startup work (Socialtext, Sceneverse) and was a professor at Université du Québec à Montréal from 2007 to 2011. http://about.me/sebpaquet
Todd Parker is a holistic business consultant engaging individuals and organizations to implement strategies and systems to optimize effectiveness and enhance well-being. He has participated in the business development of a multinational startup biotech firm, the birthing of the China-U.S. Center for Sustainable Development, and the creation of a sustainability strategy for a Virginia beverage distribution company that is emerging as an industry model nationwide. The sweet spot of his work is facilitating clarity of purpose in organizations and then implementing processes and systems to provide real-time visibility of performance metrics to achieve desired outcomes—in short, transforming ideas and visions into physical form. Thriving in multicultural environments and fluent in the languages of business and finance, sustainability and environmental stewardship, personal process and human consciousness, modern physics and contemplative sciences, Todd often catalyzes effective communication and trust among diverse groups to get things done. Holding a BS in Aerospace Engineering (University of MD) and an MBA (University of Oregon), his current primary teachers are wife Anya and daughters Maya (age 8) and Zina (age 5) who remind him the value of being fully present in each moment.
Gk Parish-Philp has extensive expertise in building online digital media communities and brands. He spent 5 years each in product management at MP3.com and DivX and was instrumental in growing them from start-ups to successful IPOs by managing their online product strategies with an eye toward developing powerful, engaged communities around their brands. He is now running his own startup, Groundswell Enterprises which focuses on leveraging the power of technology and networks to the benefit of the ‘little guys’. Groundswell’s first product is Affabl (formerly BackMyBook), a web publishing/community/e-commerce platform that enables artists to create online communities around their content and sell directly to fans. http://gkparishphilp.com
Mick Rocks grew up in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. and graduated with a degree in Business Administration from the University of Maryland. He pursued a career in IT that spanned over 30 years – primarily in Oracle based database application design and project management for the media industry. In 2005, Mick picked up stakes and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico where he started a new career in the film industry. After finishing a degree from the local film school, Mick immersed himself into as many aspects of film and video production as he could – working on camera crews, digital editing and even as a rigging electrician on the film “Avengers”. Mick put his writing skills to work creating the screenplay for the award winning short film “Zombiewood”.
Bonnitta Roy is owner and meta-designer at Alderlore Insight Center. She is an award winning process philosopher whose work on consciousness has twice been awarded for academic achievement at international conferences. She is an associate editor of Integral Review, a peer reviewed journal on new thought, research and praxis. Bonnitta is founder of Whole Systems Health Collaborative. Bonnitta is a guest faculty of the Conscious Evolution Masters Course at The Graduate Institute. She is founder/curator of The Magellan Courses, an on-line experimental course in post-conventional learning , and hosts transformative workshops through the Magellan Fellowship Initiative. She and her partner are stewards of Alderlore, their home-farm with the Horses at Alderlore, where they hold workshops on energy awareness, body language and emotional balance through engaging horses and nature in extraordinary ways. She has recently retired from 3 decades of work as a leader in the landscape architecture and design-build industry. http://alderlore.com/
Celia Culver Rutt is currently working on building a consortium for the local food economy of the Allegheny Highlands of Virginia. She helped create the Allegheny Highlands Agricultural Center, which launched Allegheny Meats (AM) in April of 2012. AM is an Animal Welfare Approved, USDA Inspected meat processing facility in Highland County, VA. Celia is on the board of The Highland Center, a catalyst for rural economic development and on the board of The Nature Conservancy. She has taught High School Biology, Horticulture at The National Arboretum and State Arboretum of Virginia, and Head Start. She owned a Native Plant landscape design business and is a project consultant for habitat restoration and permaculture. Celia worked and studied at Harvard Medical School before earning a MA in Biology and Science Education from Boston University.
Jim Ruttis the past Chairman of the Santa Fe Institute. He was CEO of Network Solutions, Inc., which operated the .com, .net, and .org domain namespaces on the Internet. He served as chief strategy officer and division President after Network Solutions was acquired by VeriSign in 2000. Prior to Network Solutions, Jim was the first chief technology officer of Thomson-Reuters and before that, he either founded or played a key role in several significant information services and network companies: THE SOURCE, Business Research Corp., First Call, Pinpoint Information, and NHC Systems. He was non-executive Chairman of the computer chip design software company Analog Design Automation from 2001 until its acquisition by Synposis in 2004. He was Researcher in Residence from 2002 to 2004 at the Santa Fe Institute, studying the application of complexity science to financial markets, social simulations, agent based models, and evolutionary artificial intelligence. Jim received his B.S. degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975.
David Schweitzer David’s mother was a fashion designer and his father an art dealer - inspiration which gave rise to his own creativity. David began his creative journey in photography by building a darkroom in his closet at the age of 10. At that time, while on set at Madison Pollack & O’hara (NYC), Gerald Hirshfeld, ASC, sat him on his lap and had David look through the viewfinder of a Mitchell BNC Reflex Camera, which was about 8 times his size and was making 8mm films from the age of 11. David is an award winning filmmaker and has been a Director of Photography in the International Cinematographer’s Guild since 1980. He is often hired on film productions in that capacity and is an active documentarian. http://davidjeanschweitzer.com
Cameron Stephens is the founder of Tradewinds Consulting, and focuses on optimizing business strategy, processes, and systems. His expertise in process design, CRM and SaaS as the industry has evolved has positively impacted clients in telecom, technology, commercial real estate, hospitality, medical technology, publishing, and other industries over the last decade. Grounded in philosophy and technology, his current interest is in designing sustainable solutions that adapt to complexity without compromising their initial principles. Although a graduate of the University of Chicago, Cameron is a native Texan, does not care for the cold, and currently resides in Dallas.
Bruce Tizes is a deep evidence-based generalist, inducing result from intention, attention and work. Among other things, he has managed real estate with a terminal valuation of several billion dollars, practiced medicine for some thirty years, graduated from law school, produced and distributed feature motion pictures, trend-traded, and thinks differently. He reports being happy to learn and happy to teach, seeks opportunities to buy and sell risk in expectation of reward, and intends to participate in creating a better future today.
Mihaela Ulieru - Along her over 25 years career, Professor Ulieru led several large scale projects targeting the management of complex situations through more organic ways of governance, attacking global challenges from original and highly interdisciplinary perspectives. Among the highlights are her large scale international collaborative projects aiming to make ICT an integral component of policy making for a healthier, safer, more sustainable, and innovation-driven world: IT Revolutions, Industrial Informatics, Future of Medicine, Living Technologies, Socio-Technical Combinatorics, Adaptive Risk Management and Emulating the Mind. She was awarded the ‘NORTEL Chair in Intelligent Systems’ and the ‘Canada Research Chair in e-Society’ to explore societal transformation in the digital economy and the emergence of participatory platforms. A frequently invited speaker at the most prestigious venues, Professor Ulieru works with the United Nations and many governments around the world to achieve the true promise of the Knowledge Society. http://www.theimpactinstitute.org/
Mira Joy Vivant is the original Joyologist. After a series of profound spiritual experiences, Mira left her highly successful career as a corporate executive for major multinational companies in Europe to pursue a life of joyful service. She has developed her unique philosophy and teaching: Joyology – the art and science of living an authentic joyful life. She is a passionate proponent of a philosophy that every individual has the responsibility as well as the right to pursue and attain the highest fulfillment of life’s dreams and visions. Her work is dedicated to empowering people to create and live a purposeful, meaningful, and playful life. Mira is Founder of Vivant Joyology Institute and gives lectures, seminars, and individual and couple counseling. She is also President of Vision-In-Action, an organization dedicated to the transformation of the world through the evolution of human consciousness and the creation of a new societal architecture—Omnicentricism.
Bret Weinstein For the last ten years Bret and his wife have been professors at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. His professional specialty is adaptive evolution. His current intellectual projects include a theoretical investigation of the evolution of tyranny, the evolution of religious faith, and the adaptive relationship between environmental novelty and cognitive consciousness. He also has a longstanding interest in the interaction of economics, governance and game theory. Since childhood Bret has been fascinated by animals of all sorts, and also by the inner workings of man-made machines. He likes to work with his hands, and is happiest when taking things apart, fixing things or building. Bret and his wife Heather Heying were fortunate to live for extended periods in Panama, Costa Rica and Madagascar, and in each case, found the experience transformative. However, raising two young boys in this strange era is by far the most important and fascinating challenge they have encountered.
Edward West is an entrepreneur and educator. Currently, he is the Founder and CEO of Hylo, a social utility that connects people, ideas, and resources, in community. He is also Co-founder of the Hub Oakland, which is part of a whole-block "urban innovation cluster" coming to Oakland in Fall 2013. In order to prototype the future, he has a deep interest in using the principles of evolution and complexity to create a resource-sharing layer for the social web (Hylo) and self-replicating urban innovation clusters (Hub Oakland), with the goal of building a more conscious, loving, just, regenerative and sustainable world. In 2006, Edward co-founded Mission Motors. He has served as Faculty at Presidio Graduate School's sustainability-focused MBA program, and the MBA in Design Strategy at California College of the Arts. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Yale University, and an MBA from Presidio Graduate School.
Jon Wilkins is a Theoretical Evolutionary Biologist and Poet. He received his PhD in Biophysics from Harvard in 2002, was a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows from 2002-2005, and was a Professor at the Santa Fe Institute from 2005-2011. In 2011, he moved to Montclair, NJ, where he founded the Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship. The Ronin Institute is developing a new model for scholarly research outside of the university system by facilitating research by unaffiliated and part-time scholars in all fields. Jon’s work in Biology focuses on understanding the causes and consequences of evolutionary conflict within an organism, and the origins of complex genetic interactions. Jon’s award-winning poetry book, Transistor Rodeo, has been called “a thousand afternoons of brainy, brawling, fragrant, dazzling microscopic daisies.” http://jonfwilkins.com
Meghan Williamson - Meghan Williamson is a place-based, locally-focused entrepreneur who designs alternative systems in which communities can build greater interconnectedness, real economic vibrancy, and a sense of regenerative possibility. She is previously the Executive Director of the Staunton Creative Community Fund, a microlender and entrepreneurship development agency, and the Economic Development Director for the City of Waynesboro. An architect of shared-visioning spaces, she has launched community platforms for entrepreneurial projects, catalyzed networks of sustainable innovations and individuals, and formed a local timebank as alternative currency. While she has logged her hours with institutions such as the Urban Institute, a Washington DC policy think tank, these days she's more likely be to found teaching permaculture in the Shenandoah Valley and working within informal gift economies to complete her off-grid residence. She hunts in the fall, bikes when it's sunny, and is mother to one loyal English Shepard. tandemtours.tumblr.com
Devin Balkind began his career as a consultant and entrepreneur who created a crowdfunding platform for nonprofits. When he realized that a lack of collaboration and coordination between nonprofits was limiting civil society's effectiveness more than its lack of funding, he abandoned his for-profit venture to investigate where authentic social innovation was taking place. He soon discovered the free/libre/open-source software movement and has been determined to apply its processes and principles to civil society ever since. Through his nonprofit Sarapis, Devin has worked with a wide range of groups including community organizations, farms, social movements, disaster relief providers and software projects. His boldest collaborations have been with the Occupy movement, where he's worked diverse and dynamic teams to set up a myriad of technical solutions. Beyond giving him the opportunity to test out a lot of tools and techniques, Occupy strengthened his ability to bring users and technologists together to tackle real world challenges.
vitamindwb.com
Doug Carmichael moved from (or through) physics, psychology, psychoanalysis to strategic consulting in a wide range of corporate, non profit and governments. Co-created the Stanford Strategy Studio (now on hold) to explore how adults can have more intelligent conversations, started a high level no agenda allowed discussion group in Palo Alto, worked with Don Kennedy and Paul Ehrlich on environmental issues, convincing me environmentalists were too naive about economics, so he became a consultant on strategy and the humanities to the Institute for New Economic Thinking (what is it? could we recognize it?) Cal tech, Berkeley, Harvard, professor at Santa Cruz (long ago), studied with Erich Fromm, influenced by Feynman, Feyerabned, Jerry Lettivin (MIT), Piaget and Eric Voegelin. Ran consulting projects using The Source and Mosaic from the late seventies. He drafted a book, GardenWorld Politics and blogs at www.dougcarmichael.com . He says “An organization is a page of data and a novel full of relationships.”
Jerri Chou is the Co-Founder of The Feast Social Innovation Conference, which brings together the world’s radical creatives, entrepreneurs, thinkers, doers, and innovators from across all disciplines to drive new ways of making the world work better. She is a master at communicating big ideas and inspiring action, and accomplished in producing large scale events that combine many platforms. Named one of FastCompany's Most Creative People in Business, she is also the head strategist at Lovely Day, the agency for "human brands," and works to make innovative social solutions the new standard for "business as usual." She lives in New York City.
Marcia Conner advises corporate execs and entrepreneurs to radically improve organization systems so people flourish and business thrives. Described by one client as "making work not suck," she's often brought in as a culture “fixer,” radically accelerating how people engage and innovate. Fellow of the Darden School of Business, on Telefónica’s Disruptive Council and longtime contributor for Fast Company, she has appeared on ABC, BBC, and in the Wall Street Journal. Clients span industries including telecom, financial services, healthcare, food and beverage. She was VP/Information Futurist at PeopleSoft, Worldwide Manager at Microsoft and Partner at Altimeter. She has lead several global programs on distributed organizational models, uniting modern network technologies and the insights of complex adaptive systems. Her last book was The New Social Learning: A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media. Her next book focuses on the untapped power of human ingenuity. She is based in Staunton Virginia.
marciaconner.com
Joe Edelman’s main professional interest is rebuilding empires of consumption as empires of fulfillment. A key area of study is the difference between consumer choice and meaningful choice. Here are three things he'd like to build this year: (a) a mobile OS based on giving people meaningful choices; (b) a "time well spent" metadata standard that can help people chose the right things to engage with in tech; (c) a "happiness HMO" (really a fulfillment HMO) that takes a monthly fee and guarantees fulfillment. Joe has worked for The Gov’t of Tibet in Exile, Interval Research Corporation, the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, WGBH Television, Dartmouth College, a post-Katrina soup kitchen, an unschool called North Star, renesys.com, and others.
nxhx.org
Curtis Faith is best known as a member of the elite Chicago trading group, the Turtles. The group started as a bet between its founders: Were traders born or raised? In his early 20s, Curtis earned more money than makes good sense as a Turtle and he wrote a bestselling book, Way of the Turtle, detailing these adventures. He retired from trading at 27. Curtis has been a successful and very unsuccessful tech entrepreneur. He founded several software and tech startups. Curtis sometimes serves as a part-time CTO and advisor to startups and has consulted to the marketing and development departments of many Silicon Valley startups. Curtis has spent the last five years in field research for a book on the economic underpinnings of poverty and other seemingly intractable social problems.
Mark Frazier is cofounder and president of Openworld, a nonprofit volunteer network specializing in innovative ways to remove barriers to entrepreneurship. He has worked in 50+ countries over the past three decades on policy reforms and free economic zones. Mark’s current focus is on strategies for self-help groups to become financially sustainable through land grants, and on virtual games to help awaken dormant property values. In Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, he is active in nonprofit groups working to improve the local business climate and expand access to skills via micro-scholarships. Earlier in his career, he was publisher and managing editor of Reason magazine, and cofounder of the Local Government Center, the springboard for Reason Foundation’s privatization practice. Mark Frazier is a graduate of Harvard University and former Visiting Fellow of the Lehrman Institute.
http://openworld.com
Flemming Funch made a living as a freelance programmer for many years. He also had a career as a counselor and trained in various alternative therapies. He wrote a couple of books about his techniques for a somewhat specialized audience. In the mid-1990s, he created an early social network for visionaries, called the New Civilization Network, both acting as facilitator and as sole programmer. He learned a lot about what worked and what didn't work for online communities. He has a passion for creating better tools for collaborative environments that actually serve the intended outcomes. Fleming is good at making complex principles and ideas simple to understand. He writes and speaks well - preferably about certain philosophical and/or future oriented themes. He would like to help find keys to collective intelligence and to grow a better global brain. He is currently passionate about his maker experience with the aquaponic greenhouse in his garden and about west coast swing dancing.
Joel Getzendanner spent the last 25 years working on the question of how to organize large scale, social and institutional change. About half of that time, he worked in philanthropy, managing a $20 million grant portfolio at the Joyce Foundation and $300 million endowment and social investment portfolio at the F.B. Heron Foundation. The balance of his time has involved working with social entrepreneurs -- as varied as the World Bank, a hydrogen car manufacturer, an international mother-to-mother support group, and a software start-up -- developing and implement new strategies and organizational concepts that take on a networked and distributed form, and embody a strong social purpose and set of principles. Joel was a frequent visitor to the Santa Fe Institute in the early 1990's, and was a founding board member of the Chaordic Alliance, the Identity Commons and the Fourth Sector Network. He's also a bit of a karaoke junkie…
www.joelgetz.com
Eric Grab is a multi-talented technologist and adventurer. Starting in 1989 with background in computer science and software engineering, he worked on and evangelized state-of-the-art systems for Booz Allen and Hamilton, DivX, Massive Media Group, Rovi, San Diego State University, and Walt Disney Studios. Since 2000 he has worked with movie studios and consumer electronics companies to move forward the vision of easy and secure access to digital entertainment. Starting with no offshore boating experience, Eric trained, prepared, and outfitted a new state of the art boat for a two-year global adventure to visit over 30 countries from 2007 to 2009. Kosmos, one of the smallest power boats (43 feet) to ever circumnavigate around the world, was piloted by Eric and his wife. Eric is currently a VP of Technology for Rovi Corporation. http://kosmos.liveflux.net/blog.
Jordan Greenhall was a co-founder of DivX and served as the Company’s CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directions from 2000 until 2007. From January 1999 to June 1999, Mr. Greenhall was Vice President at MP3.com, a digital media company. From July 1999 to January 2000, Mr. Greenhall served as a Strategic Consultant with INTERVU, a premier streaming media services provider. Mr. Greenhall received a J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School and a B.A., summa cum laude, from Texas A&M University. From 2009 to 2012 he served on the Board of Trustees of the Santa Fe Institute. He is presently on the Board of Directors of One Health Solutions and Mogul and on the Board of Advisors of Takelessons.
Mark How is an entrepreneurial executive/operator with strengths in closing strategic deals, leading business development and sales. Passionate about teams, trust and building technology organizations with great people. Mark spent the last ~2 years at a Google Ventures, Intel & Bessemer funded start-up (SweetLabs), as a divisional GM and board representative for an ad network for apps(Opencandy). Prior to that Mark has run Sales and Business Development teams a a variety of successful start ups, having taken 3 companies to profitability, and 2 to IPO over the last 15 years. A husband of almost 20 years, and the father of 2 wonderful girls Mark loves to spend time with family and friends. At other times "life is" Mark being a zealously passionate foodie, oenophile, and coffee-holic. Mark was born in Canada but lives in San Diego now.
Yasuhiko Genku Kimura is a Zen Buddhist priest, philosopher, and cosmologist who teaches philosophy as a way of self-realization, uniquelyintegrating advanced Western scientific thought with the intuitive wisdom of Eastern spiritual traditions. Yasuhiko is a creator and leader of well over one hundred original philosophical self-developmental programs; consultant to leaders in business, science, and cultural organizations; translator of esoteric ancient Japanese and Chinese scriptures; and author of books and essays on the themes of integral philosophy, evolutionary ethics, authentic spirituality, evolution of consciousness, philosophy of science, and business leadership. He served as Executive Director of the Twilight Club, a venerable cultural-ethical movement founded by Herbert Spencer, Ralph Emerson, Andrew Carnegie, etc., and further developed by Walter Russell, Thomas Watson, Sr., Alexis Carrel, etc. In 2003 Yasuhiko established Vision-In-Action as the successor of the Twilight Club for the 21st century, envisioned as an omnicentric meta-movement for individual and world transformation.
www.VIA-VisionInAction.org
Amy Kirschner is the Founder of the Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility (VBSR) Marketplace program, a peer-to-peer mutual credit system. She has degrees from Purdue University (B.S., Business) and the University of Vermont (M.S., Natural Resources). She received a 2010 Rising Star Award from Vermont Business Magazine, is a coordinator for the National Day of Civic Hacking (Burlington) and for the Women Business Owners Network (Stowe). Crowd-sourced Description: Social Enterprise, Future of Money, Rethinking Money, Alt.Currencies, Positive Futures, Commons, Mutual Aid, Sharing Economy, New Economy, Digital Finance, Creators, Social Change Innovator, Local First, Think Differently, Big Thinker, Emergence, Innovative Systems, Collaboration, Weaver, Resilience Technician, Gardening, Vermont.
Bruce Kunkel is co-founder and board member of Sonoma County GoLocal Coop. He recently retired as Principal of Bruce Kunkel – Integral Human Capital, a hi-tech executive search and consulting firm. Prior, Bruce founded and ran Dovetail, Inc., Silicon Valley executive search firm, enjoyed success as co-founder and recording artist with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and was founder and CEO of Zenbod Corporation, an early mass customization fashion company. As a hi-tech organizational consultant, Bruce has secured and counseled key talent for engineering, sales, marketing, operations, and finance sectors for pre-IPOs and startups, as well as public technology clients. Bruce is co-founder of the Santa Rosa Integral Salon and is active in economic localization and community building.
http://sonomacounty.golocal.coop/
Lydia Laurenson received her B.A. from Bard College At Simon's Rock in 2004, when she was 19. She spent several years managing the oldest bookstore in Chicago and freelancing as a game designer, most prominently at the award-winning White Wolf Game Studio. She soon developed a deep interest in social justice and community-building, working extensively with cooperatives and artistic non-profits. She created a well-known four-year-long public program at the Hull-House, and was elected Chairman of the Board at a South Side housing cooperative. In her mid-twenties, Lydia served with the Peace Corps in Swaziland, Africa. Upon her return, she spent several years as a journalist, editor, and speaker. Lydia has worked with outlets ranging from The Guardian, to Time Out, to Gawker Media; she has spoken at universities across the U.S., and at South By Southwest Interactive. In 2012, she began consulting on social media strategy and other digital marketing questions.
Drew Little is a New Economist/Game Designer/Tech Social Entrepreneur on a mission to help humanity live creative, purpose-driven lives in a sustainable world. He is the creator of an evolutionary economic model called Producism, which aims to democratize money, social entrepreneurship, and education by fully utilizing the power of the web, in order to revitalize local economies and communities in a fun and easy way. He recently published a book about this model called "The Producism Manifesto: A New Game For A New Economy. He is the founder of the idea incubator cooperative, The Illuminated Ventures Project, and the new economy startup, Producia, which is a reality-based, virtual economy game for universities, MOOCs, and local communities. Drew is a member of The Young Entrepreneur Council, and a board member of The Lifeboat Foundation (New Money Systems, Human Trajectories, Finance, and Economics subcommittees). He is a contributor to Shareable Magazine, Social Earth, and The Daily Bitcoin.
drewlittle.co
Mark McDonough currently manages software testing for VisionFoundry in Tyson’s corner, VA. He has done a little bit of everything in the web industry: QA, Tech Writing, Development, Database Administration, and UI design. He has been a computer keypunch operator, an FM DJ, a start-up entrepreneur, an architectural historian, and a reporter. He also has been the business manager for a museum and a high school history teacher specializing in instructing the great unwashed – the latter of which he says was probably his favorite job, and far and away the hardest. Mark received his Masters of Education from Harvard University and his BA from Brown.
http://www.well.com/~mcdee/
Venessa Miemis - Venessa’s background in psychology, social theory, and media studies, combined with interests in futures studies, systems theory, and consciousness research create a unique perspective from which to think about massive change. Her inquiries cover broad territory, from big picture thinking about the evolution of human civilization, down to personal reflection on how to be a more empowered and happy person.
http://emergentbydesign.com/
Thor Muller has been a San Francisco-based Internet entrepreneur since 1995, most recently founding a company called Get Satisfaction. He is also the co-founder and former Managing Director of Rubyred Labs, a web apps firm. Thor was a first generation Web entrepreneur, creating Web success stories for companies such as Yahoo, Dell, Bank of America, Intel, Virgin Records, Fujitsu, Discovery Channel, and Sony. In 1995, he started and ran an early Web development boutique, Prophet Communications, where he served as VP of Digital Media. He just co-authored a best-selling book called Get Lucky: How to Put Planned Serendipity to Work For You and Your Business. Over the last few years Thor has been collecting people who have an interest in systemic overhaul, and is interested in helping to build out this network towards a pragmatic end.
http://thormuller.com
Mike Needham was a retired college textbook publisher and a fierce defender of IP rights when he arrived at Game~B. Now he is a recovering textbook publisher and a fierce defender of open-source alternatives. Mike's first job out of college was U.S. Treasury Agent, I.R.S. He soon moved on to college textbook sales for Wadsworth Publishing (a Thomson/Reuters sub.). After a few years at sales management he was promoted to Science Editor at Broke/Cole Publishing, a division of Wadsworth. Eventually Mike became President of Brooks/Cole. He has also been CEO of the college divisions of: South-Western Publishing (another Thomson company), McGraw-Hill Publishing and Worth Publishers. Mike returned to the Washington DC area and Thomson/Reuters to manage a financial newsletter and retired from T/R to start a publishing consulting shop. He has since served as a Board member and advisor to a number of successful start-ups including Websurveyor Corp. and Abacast, Inc. He is a graduate of the University of Maryland at College Park
Bill Nichols is currently doing information architecture for a government agency. He has twenty five plus years in technology and twenty plus years in financial services. Bill is an expert in software design, production and sales, corporate governance, and the plumbing of the financial system – especially securities markets and payments systems. Bill was the CEO of a startup sold to Thomson Financial in 1995 where he remained for more than seven years. Bill has a significant background in M&A and operations integration. He has consulted for a variety of companies, from NY’s most prestigious wine merchant to Nasdaq.
Sebastien Paquet likes to refer to himself using fancy terms like "culture hacker" and "social alchemist". He is an expert in knowledge sharing, collaboration technology and social software. He wants to help the unfolding of local resilience and a living economy by acting as an explainer, a connector and a catalyst. He wrote one of the first dissertations on social software (2003) and received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Université de Montréal. He has been involved in research (National Research Council of Canada) and startup work (Socialtext, Sceneverse) and was a professor at Université du Québec à Montréal from 2007 to 2011.
http://about.me/sebpaquet
Todd Parker is a holistic business consultant engaging individuals and organizations to implement strategies and systems to optimize effectiveness and enhance well-being. He has participated in the business development of a multinational startup biotech firm, the birthing of the China-U.S. Center for Sustainable Development, and the creation of a sustainability strategy for a Virginia beverage distribution company that is emerging as an industry model nationwide. The sweet spot of his work is facilitating clarity of purpose in organizations and then implementing processes and systems to provide real-time visibility of performance metrics to achieve desired outcomes—in short, transforming ideas and visions into physical form. Thriving in multicultural environments and fluent in the languages of business and finance, sustainability and environmental stewardship, personal process and human consciousness, modern physics and contemplative sciences, Todd often catalyzes effective communication and trust among diverse groups to get things done. Holding a BS in Aerospace Engineering (University of MD) and an MBA (University of Oregon), his current primary teachers are wife Anya and daughters Maya (age 8) and Zina (age 5) who remind him the value of being fully present in each moment.
Gk Parish-Philp has extensive expertise in building online digital media communities and brands. He spent 5 years each in product management at MP3.com and DivX and was instrumental in growing them from start-ups to successful IPOs by managing their online product strategies with an eye toward developing powerful, engaged communities around their brands. He is now running his own startup, Groundswell Enterprises which focuses on leveraging the power of technology and networks to the benefit of the ‘little guys’. Groundswell’s first product is Affabl (formerly BackMyBook), a web publishing/community/e-commerce platform that enables artists to create online communities around their content and sell directly to fans.
http://gkparishphilp.com
Mick Rocks grew up in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. and graduated with a degree in Business Administration from the University of Maryland. He pursued a career in IT that spanned over 30 years – primarily in Oracle based database application design and project management for the media industry. In 2005, Mick picked up stakes and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico where he started a new career in the film industry. After finishing a degree from the local film school, Mick immersed himself into as many aspects of film and video production as he could – working on camera crews, digital editing and even as a rigging electrician on the film “Avengers”. Mick put his writing skills to work creating the screenplay for the award winning short film “Zombiewood”.
Bonnitta Roy is owner and meta-designer at Alderlore Insight Center. She is an award winning process philosopher whose work on consciousness has twice been awarded for academic achievement at international conferences. She is an associate editor of Integral Review, a peer reviewed journal on new thought, research and praxis. Bonnitta is founder of Whole Systems Health Collaborative. Bonnitta is a guest faculty of the Conscious Evolution Masters Course at The Graduate Institute. She is founder/curator of The Magellan Courses, an on-line experimental course in post-conventional learning , and hosts transformative workshops through the Magellan Fellowship Initiative. She and her partner are stewards of Alderlore, their home-farm with the Horses at Alderlore, where they hold workshops on energy awareness, body language and emotional balance through engaging horses and nature in extraordinary ways. She has recently retired from 3 decades of work as a leader in the landscape architecture and design-build industry.
http://alderlore.com/
Celia Culver Rutt is currently working on building a consortium for the local food economy of the Allegheny Highlands of Virginia. She helped create the Allegheny Highlands Agricultural Center, which launched Allegheny Meats (AM) in April of 2012. AM is an Animal Welfare Approved, USDA Inspected meat processing facility in Highland County, VA. Celia is on the board of The Highland Center, a catalyst for rural economic development and on the board of The Nature Conservancy. She has taught High School Biology, Horticulture at The National Arboretum and State Arboretum of Virginia, and Head Start. She owned a Native Plant landscape design business and is a project consultant for habitat restoration and permaculture. Celia worked and studied at Harvard Medical School before earning a MA in Biology and Science Education from Boston University.
Jim Rutt is the past Chairman of the Santa Fe Institute. He was CEO of Network Solutions, Inc., which operated the .com, .net, and .org domain namespaces on the Internet. He served as chief strategy officer and division President after Network Solutions was acquired by VeriSign in 2000. Prior to Network Solutions, Jim was the first chief technology officer of Thomson-Reuters and before that, he either founded or played a key role in several significant information services and network companies: THE SOURCE, Business Research Corp., First Call, Pinpoint Information, and NHC Systems. He was non-executive Chairman of the computer chip design software company Analog Design Automation from 2001 until its acquisition by Synposis in 2004. He was Researcher in Residence from 2002 to 2004 at the Santa Fe Institute, studying the application of complexity science to financial markets, social simulations, agent based models, and evolutionary artificial intelligence. Jim received his B.S. degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975.
David Schweitzer David’s mother was a fashion designer and his father an art dealer - inspiration which gave rise to his own creativity. David began his creative journey in photography by building a darkroom in his closet at the age of 10. At that time, while on set at Madison Pollack & O’hara (NYC), Gerald Hirshfeld, ASC, sat him on his lap and had David look through the viewfinder of a Mitchell BNC Reflex Camera, which was about 8 times his size and was making 8mm films from the age of 11. David is an award winning filmmaker and has been a Director of Photography in the International Cinematographer’s Guild since 1980. He is often hired on film productions in that capacity and is an active documentarian.
http://davidjeanschweitzer.com
Cameron Stephens is the founder of Tradewinds Consulting, and focuses on optimizing business strategy, processes, and systems. His expertise in process design, CRM and SaaS as the industry has evolved has positively impacted clients in telecom, technology, commercial real estate, hospitality, medical technology, publishing, and other industries over the last decade. Grounded in philosophy and technology, his current interest is in designing sustainable solutions that adapt to complexity without compromising their initial principles. Although a graduate of the University of Chicago, Cameron is a native Texan, does not care for the cold, and currently resides in Dallas.
Bruce Tizes is a deep evidence-based generalist, inducing result from intention, attention and work. Among other things, he has managed real estate with a terminal valuation of several billion dollars, practiced medicine for some thirty years, graduated from law school, produced and distributed feature motion pictures, trend-traded, and thinks differently. He reports being happy to learn and happy to teach, seeks opportunities to buy and sell risk in expectation of reward, and intends to participate in creating a better future today.
Mihaela Ulieru - Along her over 25 years career, Professor Ulieru led several large scale projects targeting the management of complex situations through more organic ways of governance, attacking global challenges from original and highly interdisciplinary perspectives. Among the highlights are her large scale international collaborative projects aiming to make ICT an integral component of policy making for a healthier, safer, more sustainable, and innovation-driven world: IT Revolutions, Industrial Informatics, Future of Medicine, Living Technologies, Socio-Technical Combinatorics, Adaptive Risk Management and Emulating the Mind. She was awarded the ‘NORTEL Chair in Intelligent Systems’ and the ‘Canada Research Chair in e-Society’ to explore societal transformation in the digital economy and the emergence of participatory platforms. A frequently invited speaker at the most prestigious venues, Professor Ulieru works with the United Nations and many governments around the world to achieve the true promise of the Knowledge Society. http://www.theimpactinstitute.org/
Mira Joy Vivant is the original Joyologist. After a series of profound spiritual experiences, Mira left her highly successful career as a corporate executive for major multinational companies in Europe to pursue a life of joyful service. She has developed her unique philosophy and teaching: Joyology – the art and science of living an authentic joyful life. She is a passionate proponent of a philosophy that every individual has the responsibility as well as the right to pursue and attain the highest fulfillment of life’s dreams and visions. Her work is dedicated to empowering people to create and live a purposeful, meaningful, and playful life. Mira is Founder of Vivant Joyology Institute and gives lectures, seminars, and individual and couple counseling. She is also President of Vision-In-Action, an organization dedicated to the transformation of the world through the evolution of human consciousness and the creation of a new societal architecture—Omnicentricism.
Bret Weinstein For the last ten years Bret and his wife have been professors at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. His professional specialty is adaptive evolution. His current intellectual projects include a theoretical investigation of the evolution of tyranny, the evolution of religious faith, and the adaptive relationship between environmental novelty and cognitive consciousness. He also has a longstanding interest in the interaction of economics, governance and game theory. Since childhood Bret has been fascinated by animals of all sorts, and also by the inner workings of man-made machines. He likes to work with his hands, and is happiest when taking things apart, fixing things or building. Bret and his wife Heather Heying were fortunate to live for extended periods in Panama, Costa Rica and Madagascar, and in each case, found the experience transformative. However, raising two young boys in this strange era is by far the most important and fascinating challenge they have encountered.
Edward West is an entrepreneur and educator. Currently, he is the Founder and CEO of Hylo, a social utility that connects people, ideas, and resources, in community. He is also Co-founder of the Hub Oakland, which is part of a whole-block "urban innovation cluster" coming to Oakland in Fall 2013. In order to prototype the future, he has a deep interest in using the principles of evolution and complexity to create a resource-sharing layer for the social web (Hylo) and self-replicating urban innovation clusters (Hub Oakland), with the goal of building a more conscious, loving, just, regenerative and sustainable world. In 2006, Edward co-founded Mission Motors. He has served as Faculty at Presidio Graduate School's sustainability-focused MBA program, and the MBA in Design Strategy at California College of the Arts. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Yale University, and an MBA from Presidio Graduate School.
Jon Wilkins is a Theoretical Evolutionary Biologist and Poet. He received his PhD in Biophysics from Harvard in 2002, was a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows from 2002-2005, and was a Professor at the Santa Fe Institute from 2005-2011. In 2011, he moved to Montclair, NJ, where he founded the Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship. The Ronin Institute is developing a new model for scholarly research outside of the university system by facilitating research by unaffiliated and part-time scholars in all fields. Jon’s work in Biology focuses on understanding the causes and consequences of evolutionary conflict within an organism, and the origins of complex genetic interactions. Jon’s award-winning poetry book, Transistor Rodeo, has been called “a thousand afternoons of brainy, brawling, fragrant, dazzling microscopic daisies.”
http://jonfwilkins.com
Meghan Williamson - Meghan Williamson is a place-based, locally-focused entrepreneur who designs alternative systems in which communities can build greater interconnectedness, real economic vibrancy, and a sense of regenerative possibility. She is previously the Executive Director of the Staunton Creative Community Fund, a microlender and entrepreneurship development agency, and the Economic Development Director for the City of Waynesboro. An architect of shared-visioning spaces, she has launched community platforms for entrepreneurial projects, catalyzed networks of sustainable innovations and individuals, and formed a local timebank as alternative currency. While she has logged her hours with institutions such as the Urban Institute, a Washington DC policy think tank, these days she's more likely be to found teaching permaculture in the Shenandoah Valley and working within informal gift economies to complete her off-grid residence. She hunts in the fall, bikes when it's sunny, and is mother to one loyal English Shepard. tandemtours.tumblr.com